So Andrew Lansley has been fired as Health Secretary. Good riddance. Simon Clark has more on the story.

But will the new man, Jeremy Hunt, be any better? Embroiled in the phone hacking scandal, he’s carrying quite a lot of baggage.

I’m told he voted against the smoking ban. But I wonder if that makes much difference. When someone becomes a government minister, they’re expected to toe the government line, whatever it happens to be. And the government line is strongly antismoking. So he’ll probably be expected to become strongly antismoking, even if he smokes.

Furthermore, when he arrives at his office, he’ll probably find Deborah Arnott or Professor John Britton sitting in his chair, ready with a brisk lecture on the need to make life even more hell for smokers than it already is, in order to save lives, or for the sake of the chiiiiildren, or both. And unless he’s been reading a few smokers’ blogs, he’ll probably swallow the entire farrago of lies.

I have zero faith in politicians these days. I’m completely disenchanted with the lot of them. Almost entirely because of the smoking ban.

Since the smoking ban came into force, there have been little knots of smokers standing outside pubs (outside everywhere, in fact). It’s been going on for five years now. And this alone is testament to the failure of the ban, and the hard antismoking line.

After all, suppose that there was some government housing measure (about the size of windows, say) which resulted in people living outside their houses rather than inside, it would be immediately understood to be a failure, wouldn’t it? People are supposed to live inside houses, not outside them. So if such disruption followed in the wake of some piece of new legislation, it would be quickly recognised to need immediate revision.

Yet more or less this is exactly what has happened with pubs. But five years on, nothing has been done. The antismoking measures have instead been multiplying, with display bans and plain packaging.

The government is indifferent to this highly visible consequence of the smoking ban. And it is indifferent to smokers. They have become non-persons to be ordered around, and swept out of sight.

It’s bad news when governments disregard a quarter of the electorate. It doesn’t make for good government. One of the merits of democracy is that it provides a feedback mechanism whereby the success or failure of legislation can be assessed, and adjustments made.

But in the case of the smoking ban the feedback – if only in the form of all those smokers standing outside pubs – is being ignored. There is no feedback mechanism. The government makes decisions, and presses on blindly, regardless of the consequences.

It’s the same with the EU too, actually. The politicians have a ‘project’ to create a European superstate, and they are indifferent to the protests of ordinary European citizens, even when they vote in referendums against it. The entire European electorate is ignored. They’re all non-persons whose opinion doesn’t matter.

The only possible outcome is disaster. Just like the only possible outcome must be disaster when a train driver speeds through signals set at red. The signals provide useful feedback. Such signals are ignored at peril. The disaster probably won’t unfold the moment the red lights are passed, but a few miles further down the track.

Someone called Nick Clegg (Or maybe Nick Legg. Or maybe Ned Clog – he’s chairman of the Libertine Dominatrix Party or something, anyway) said last year that it was more likely that capital punishment would be re-introduced than the smoking ban be repealed.

I’m beginning to think he’s right. We need to bring back hanging. And we need to bring it back specifically for the crime of treason – of which I am increasingly inclined to think that the entire political class is guilty -. Not anything goes. There are some betrayals which are unforgivable.

But I’m wondering whether it shouldn’t just be hanging that is brought back, but the complete mediaeval traditional English punishment of hanging, drawing, and quartering. It would make for a great spectacle to watch someone like Andrew Lansley being hanged, drawn, and quartered.

Particularly if you could watch it while eating a burger, and drinking a beer or two, and smoking a few cigarettes. And it took about two hours, from start to finish, much like a football match. And you could bring the wife and children too. And buy souvenir mugs and photos and pieces of flesh.

42 Responses to Good Riddance

I have a feeling the rhyming word for the new guy’s name is going to get a lot of use, and it will start as soon as he has been instructed in how he is to behave by the Sith lord, Darth Arnott. Will he resist? None of the rest of them ever have.

There is actually a government edict on windows. You have to have x amount of window in a room with y amount of floor space. Nobody pays any attention, other than the occasional council jobsworth.

Leg, be nice. Give the fella a little time and benefit of the doubt. If he turns out badly though, you can bet I’ll be one of the first to go after Mr. Mary-Me Hunt!

:)
Michael
P.S. Maybe you could find someone selling a Shrink Ray on Ebay and shrink some of your gvt folks down to NN size so they wouldn’t be as annoying. You could keep them in your attic and blindfold ‘em and play “Dodge The Train” with them as they wander around your layouts!

Or I could use em for target practice,hang em from a rope and swing em then shoot at em! Of course I will have to create a video for all my friends to have fun too! Hell I will get the whole damn family to shoot that day as we all smoke!

The former nurse has been a parliamentary under-secretary of state for health since the general election in 2010. Her portfolio included nursing and public health.

In the reshuffle, which saw health secretary Andrew Lansley replaced by former culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, former journalist Anna Soubry was appointed under-secretary of state for health.

However, portfolios for new ministers have not yet been agreed so it is not clear who will take on responsibility for nursing in the new Department of Health ministerial team.

Earl Howe was the only DH minster to keep his job in the shake-up.

Mr Lansley will become leader of the House of Commons while health minister Simon Burns was promoted to transport minister. He is expected to be replaced by Dan Poulter, a qualified doctor.

No new role has so far been announced for Ms Milton.

Care services minister Paul Burstow, a Liberal Democrat who is fighting plans to close an accident and emergency department in his south London constituency, also left the government. He has been replaced by party colleague Norman Lamb.

I believe they think the smokers standing outside the pubs is a sign of the success, not the failure, of their policies. Still, as a foreign observer, I find it interesting that the pro no-packaging forces are being forced out on the eve of the Big Decision. Could this possibly be a signal that even Cameron & Co are getting sick of the little prigs and want to guard whatever’s left of their tainted and tattered Tory reputation?
(That’s a genuine question.)

I have no idea whether Cameron and co have been getting sick of the little pricks. We’ll have to see whether the policy changes as well as the personnel. I can’t say that I’m optimistic, because the policy for the past 5 years has been antismoking and then more antismoking.

I don’t think that smokers standing outside pubs is a sign of success. The purpose of the ban, after all, was not to protect anyone, but was to make smokers stop smoking, and the fact that smokers simply moved outside signals the failure of the ban. Success would have been if smokers had stopped smoking as required, but continued going to pubs and restaurants just as much as before, and life had continued in a seamless transition from smoking allowed to smoking disallowed. That would have been success. And that hasn’t happened, either here in the UK, or in your own native New York City.

So Milton’s gone, electrode bolt through the neck and all that.
Cheered me up no end.
It does seem that the anti’s patsies are out coming out of the picture ,wouldn’t it be fun if ASH lost their DOH funding, without that, their finished, let’s face it no one would voluntarily donate to a bunch of control freaks and wierdo’s like that would they.

Addendum.
Hmmm, interesting ,from the commie rag The (not so) Independent, the Paterson placing is most interesting.
“Right-wingers welcomed the appointment of Chris Grayling as Justice Secretary in place of the more liberal Kenneth Clarke, and Owen Paterson, a climate change sceptic, as Environment Secretary, a move which called into question Mr Cameron’s pledge to head the “greenest government ever”.

” living outside their houses rather than inside……….immediate revision”
You have a lot of faith in their common sense don’t you? I believe they wouldn’t give a damn as long as their income and beliefs were protected.

One way to look at this is as Humphries put it on Today this morning – “Every re-shuffle isn’t just about moving people about; each re-shuffle sends a message.” So Lansley has gone and so has ASH-acolyte Milton. Promising developments. Then again, arch-fiend Lansley was against plain packs and pro-“common sense” prior to becoming a MInister…. After that he was spouting ASH lies as if he’d been brainwashed. I suppose only time will tell if this is a reprieve in The Persecution, or not.

You’re correct. There are violations of multiple aspects of the Declaration. It’s also important to note that the Declaration is not the Hippocratic Oath. The Hippocratic Oath is very specific in requirements (e.g., do no harm, abortion, euthanasia). The Declaration is itself a watered down version of the Oath, and even this watered down version is being routinely violated. And that’s if medical graduates are even required to take this or any oath at all and whether it serves only a ceremonial function: There are variations galore.

If we assumed that there is some uniform ethical code that medical practitioners abide by, we would be terribly mistaken. It is recognized in medical circles that this lack of coherence and uniformity, let alone application, is a glaring failure. There will be an article appearing in a medical journal every few years highlighting the sickly circumstance and that something should be done to address it. But typically nothing is done about it. This has been going on for many decades.

Then there is the related issue of iatrogenesis which refers specifically to medically-produced harm, e.g., adverse drug reactions, medical errors, poor care of the bedridden. While there are thousands upon thousands of antismoking studies, there’s only a handful on institution-wide iatrogenesis, damning as they are. Again, the conduct is similar. There will be an article every few years looking at only one source of iatrogenesis at a time. Articles addressing multiple sources of iatrogenesis at once are a rarity. And, typically, nothing is done about it.

For example:
“We estimated that in 1994 overall 2216000 (1721000-2711000) hospitalized patients had serious ADRs [adverse drug reactions] and 106000
(76000-137000) had fatal ADRs, making these reactions between the fourth and sixth leading cause of death”.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9555760?dopt=Abstract

2
There were those few that were screaming in the 1970s that the medical establishment was out of control. Contemporary medicine is dominated by technology. It is dominated by vested financial interests, the primary one being the pharmaceutical cartel. In many instances doctors are reduced to the role of “technologist” blending into the technology. Ben Casey and Marcus Welby would be turning in their stage-prop graves. There are many within medical practice that have the psychological aptitude and bedside manner of an oaf. And this is the best that their training permits.

Hippocratic Oath? Declaration of Geneva? Where? Do no harm? Where? People are now even being medically treated for risk factors, e.g., hypertension, cholesterol. These risk factors are not diseases; these people are not sick. It has been highly lucrative for the pharmaceutical cartel to tap into the “well persons” market. You can convince well people that they need to take medications for decades in an attempt to “reduce their risk” of particular outcomes. And these medications come with serious risks. According to the contemporary medical establishment, there are no well people. There are only sick people or “potentially sick” people. This whole perspective is sick. This incessant fear-mongering and promotion of physicalism has allowed the building of a destructive, lucrative medical industrial-complex, second only to the military industrial-complex. There is over-treatment, over-medication, over-screening – over-bearing.

According to Public Health people should strive for very-old age by reducing risk factors, e.g., smoking, diet. Unfortunately, the thing that comes with old age is progressive deterioration. One of the very terrible afflictions of old age is dementia. In a recent Australian story, it turns out that dementia patients in nursing homes are being routinely prescribed potent, dangerous anti-psychotic medication. Patients are reduced to a vegetative state. When the question was asked how prevalent this practice was and whether these medications were killing patients, no-one, including the mental health minister, seemed to know. No-one had bothered to look into the matter. Pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t care. As long as pills are being popped, the cash-registers keep “ka-chinking” over. For more:Families Count Cost of Dementia Drug Prescriptions
(click on the story at right for video)http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/
Transcript of the storyhttp://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3569736.htm

There is a very nasty streak – institutional bigotry – that has long been emerging from the medical establishment. If a person is a smoker, they are moved to a different “queue”. They are berated into accepting medical treatment for their “disease” of smoking (more “ka-ching” for pharmaceutical companies), or denied treatment altogether. Even Siegel noticed that things are terribly out of hand. He recently had to seek medical treatment for a broken finger. The question “do you smoke” is asked very early in hospital admission. If you are a smoker, you are treated “differently”. Siegel admitted that while in hospital he was happy not to be a smoker, although his early “Tobacco Control” activity helped to produce the current antismoking insanity.

You are so right having worked closely with doctors for 22 years I am positive that every doctor must carry a government health warning:-
Caution!! This person can seriously damage your health. Consorting with this person can cause various illness, loss of limbs, misdiagnosis, or even death

3
Consider iatrogenesis which refers to any detrimental outcome produced by medical conduct (e.g., adverse drug reactions, medical errors, poor care of the bed-ridden resulting in infected bed sores). In America, from the very few studies that have been done, iatrogenic deaths are estimated at 750,000-1,000,000 per annum (see Null et al). It dwarfs the so-called tobacco “death toll” (400,000) and is approaching half of the total annual death toll in America (2,500,000). The medical establishment is by far the leading cause of preventable death and disability and associated costs.

Further, the iatrogenic toll is far more plausible, causally, than the tobacco “toll”. The tobacco “toll” is based on lifetime (40, 50, 60+ years) use (that can involve 3,000,000 to 5,000,000 puffs on cigarettes) that also brings into play a veritable plethora of other factors over a lifetime. It is also argued from the “population level” that has very poor extrapolation potential to the individual level. Conversely, the iatrogenic toll is argued from the individual level and then estimated for the population level. For iatrogenesis, causation is typically demonstrable at the individual level. For example, with adverse drug reactions (these are properly prescribed, government-approved drugs), it may take just one or a few pills to produce cardiac arrest in some patients that can be fatal or leave permanent injury. The patient is stable and within an hour of taking a pill goes into atypical catastrophic failure. The temporality of many of these associations is not over a lifetime, but involves hours or days. Of the two – the iatrogenic or tobacco tolls – it is the former that should attract very serious scrutiny. But, as will be seen, it has been the other way around, or upside-down.

Concerning smoking, there have been thousands upon thousands of antismoking “studies” conducted/funded. Many do not break new ground but simply reinforce the agenda. World Conferences on Smoking and Health have been occurring since the 1960s. In the last few decades there are National Conferences on Smoking and Health. There are now even Conferences for Nonsmokers. Then there are Smoking Cessation Conferences run by the Pharma cartel peddling its useless/dangerous wares. Additionally there are numerous antismoking lectures and colloquia and speeches and committees and campaigns. Specific institutes for the study of tobacco have been created as sub-centres of university Public Health Departments. There has been a frenzy of antismoking activity over the last three decades. A formidable, lucrative industry has been created that did not exist 30 years ago. And the bulk of it is all under medical direction. The medical establishment has wreaked social havoc, again, to tackle the tobacco “death toll”, and peddled essentially on the basis of the far smaller, and entirely questionable, tobacco “toll” in nonsmokers (SHS).

So we could then ask that if this has been the reaction to the tobacco “death toll”, then there must be an even greater industry addressing/correcting institution-wide iatrogenesis? In fact, there’s not. Compared with the many thousands of antismoking studies, there are but a handful concerning institution-wide iatrogenesis, damning as they are. There are no conferences on iatrogenesis whatsoever. There are no specifically-created institutes addressing the issue. In fact, it attracts almost zero attention within the medical establishment itself. The medical administration doesn’t like talking about it or the public knowing about it. This is the same medical establishment that now wants to “fix-up” the world – again. Scrutinizing the medical establishment would reveal how unstable its framework is. It would mean a [reasonable] loss of profits and trust. While it tenaciously maintains the spotlight on its favorite social targets, it avoids scrutiny like the plague. The medical establishment was out of control 30 years ago. It has since entered a sinister phase. And smokers are one of the first to notice the ugly side of the medical establishment in its world-fixing (eugenics) aspirations.

So we can again ask: Hippocratic Oath? Declaration of Geneva? Where? That’s certainly not what the medical establishment operates on. The big poobahs of Public Health aggressively peddling antismoking – Draube, Crapman, etc. When did you ever hear them wanting to do something about iatrogenesis or medical ethics……… NEVER. Public Health has been hijacked by the medical establishment. Public Health departments operate under the auspices of the medical faculty. Public Health is part of the [out of control] medical establishment. It looks after the interests of the medical establishment.

The Do no harm phrase has been bantied about in state legislatures here in the states for quite some time. Its been used as justification to pass smoking bans and other liberty stealing laws. I actually watched a certain state senator on tv in a subcommittee meeting state that term explicitly and he went onto say its a worthless concept as no harm has ever been shown,but yet this is todays agenda and its used to push other public health laws.rules and regulations where no proof of harm exists.

Then here on Franks Blog some time back this was posted and I dug into it deeper:

The precautionary principle itself is a catch 22 argument. It entails giving no proof the same standing as actually having positive proof. In essence it makes a negative a positive which we all know you can never prove a negative. By using this principle we might as well all just kill ourselves as chance living with possible threats that might harm us. Its actually created to let the nazis claim whatever they want and get away with it! Its use must be destroyed as its led to total destruction of the scientific process trying to create proof where none exists to begin with,hense the mountain of evidence we hear the nazis preach all over the place without actually being held to any proof at all!

The principle itself cannot stand, it means an end to all we hold dear TRUTH.

Without truth we have no meaning,we have no future,we have no life,no culture. We have only created hazzards that never existed,a culture defeated by fanaticism and led by radical nut cases passing laws based upon NOTHING! It gives basis to outlawing anything based upon nothing,it lowers the standard of proof in court to that of hearsay evidence to now convict!

How did it happen,quite simply ENVIROMENTALISM!

Precaution as Customary Law
The question whether the precautionary principle is a principle of customary international
law has received a great deal of attention, particularly since the principle’s inclusion
in the Rio Declaration.

“Smokers don’t live as long as they are supposed to” is a major basis of the smoker denormalization campaign. If people did not smoke, they would enjoy the benefits of nonsmoking.

Well…… apparently one of the benefits, in addition to also dying (like smokers), is that there is the privilege of being mistreated and abused in old age by the medical establishment. And while being mistreated, nonsmokers can be reminded that they are experiencing the “benefits” of not smoking.

Iatrogenesis, in care terms, beyond typical iatrogenesis, is rife. It is a catastrophic blight on the medical establishment. It has been a serious problem for decades that was pointed out decades ago. Yet it has only worsened. The medical establishment has become a self-serving production-line. It has been “technologized” to the hilt. The Florence Nightingale/Marcus Welby disposition has been torn out. This is not to say that there are not caring individuals within the system. However, caring attributes are not nurtured; caring initiative is not nurtured. Lowest-common-denominator uniformity prevails: Just follow the technological procedure. Anything more might be “messing” with the shallow “system”. And it has cultivated an impersonal culture, one of casual indifference to patients’ human needs. And it is set to worsen even further as the large numbers of boomers begin entering the medical system.

Moreover, the Hippocratic Oath, at least aligned to overall patient care that emphasizes the moral, person-to-person responsibilities of the practitioner, is, for all intents and purposes, gone. It is this same medical establishment that has made an utter mess of its own field of endeavor that wants to rule the world, that wants to socially-engineer the “healthy” society. It is all part of the one derangement. It is making a mess of society as it has its own backyard.

The solution should have been obvious from the outset. Forget about eugenics, about social engineering. Stick with perfecting the humane medical treatment of those needing it. This goes far beyond “technology”.

All of these detrimental consequences are iatrogenic. It is the medical establishment that is responsible for allowing this perverse circumstance to occur. Alarm bells highlighting the danger should have been blaring decades ago. Maybe they were. But there seem to be very few in the medical establishment that are able to recognize the alarm.

The study above is a most rare one. It considers the detrimental psychological and social ramifications of Public Health-produced stigma. The study has had to reintroduce these dimensions into consideration because they are essentially non-existent in Public-Health “reasoning” which is dominated by the shallowness of materialism. This materialism, the adoption of an ideological “stance” (e.g., antismoking), and the intent to “engineer” this “ideal” into society represents a descent into the vulgarity of the eugenics mentality.

To engineer its ideal, the medical establishment fervently and aggressively promotes denormalization and stigmatization of the “undesired” activity and those engaged in it. The protagonists do not comprehend that they have degenerated into institutional bigotry. This “stance” tends to bring out the worst in those that are supposed to be providing care. A cruel streak becomes more and more evident as every opportunity is taken to coerce, to “convert”, the “undesirables” into conformity. It becomes an acute fixation, an overriding goal that obliterates all sense of the multi-dimensional damage that this activity is doing.

It is then reflected in the perception of those that have succumbed to “smoking-related disease”. They are viewed by the medical establishment – in treatment circumstances – with contempt. There stands the medical establishment, Inquisition-like, in judgment of patients, deciding who is and is not worthy of full attention and humane treatment. Patients are judged by their diseases. If patients have the “wrong” disease (e.g., smoking-related), their whole life is deemed “worthless”. Being worthless people, the medical establishment surmises that they are only due disdain, contempt, badgering and brow-beating as constant reminders of their “offense to humanity”. And it does not dawn on the self-appointed “judges” that they are suffering serious mental dysfunction. Being institution-wide dysfunction, it is self-reinforcing for those within it.

What is genuinely extraordinary, in the most obscene sense, is the absence – the sheer absence, the non-existence – of critical analysis of this sickly circumstance. It is all so terribly, so incredibly, one-sided and has been so for quite some time. What is occurring, and allowed to occur, without resistance in the medical establishment – the structures that have been put in place over the last few decades, the medical and Public Health training, the cavalier attitude, the haughtiness, the ideological leaning, and the vanquishing of the Hippocratic Oath – is dangerously sick. With no institutional will or even outsiders recognizing the danger signs and symptoms, it can only get worse.

“New research has found that the number of non-smokers being diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer has increased. The study, which will be presented today at the European Respiratory Society’s Annual Congress in Vienna, also discovered that the the number of women being diagnosed with this type of cancer is increasing as well.

Although the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed earlier in the year that the inhalation of exhaust fumes from diesel engines can lead to lung cancer, scientists have little information on other potential risk factors that can cause lung cancer in non-smokers.”

“Analysis also showed that lung cancer rates barely changed for female smokers or former-smokers; from 64% in 2000 to 66% in 2010. This number had decreased in men, while the rate of male never-smokers increased.”

“The findings show how lung cancer has changed over the last decade, lead author, Dr Chrystèle Locher, said. Not just has there been more women and more non-smokers developing the disease, but there also more cases diagnosed in stage 4 of the illness.

Well at least these unfortunate non-smokers haven’t been subjected to the nocebo effect of being constantly told they were going to die, all their lives, it’s just a pity that all the focus was on smoking rather than looking for other possible causes.

“Although the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed earlier in the year that the inhalation of exhaust fumes from diesel engines can lead to lung cancer”

CONTROVERSY AT THE SECOND WORLD CONFERENCE on Smoking and Health 1971

“Somewhere in between were the delegates of the American Cancer Society who, no matter what they may have said in private, in public urged a moderate approach, warning delegates of the danger of “‘becoming a public nuisance”‘ in trying to “stop smoking here, there and everywhere.”‘
“A fundamental principle” of ACS, said the Society’s public information vice president, Irving Rimer, has always been that “smokers are people and most of them are very nice people and very responsible people.”

His comments, at the close of a session on `Control of Smoking at Places of Work,” met little enthusiasm from an audience who two days before had tried to boo and clap down a physician who disagreed with the Royal College of Physicians report on smoking.

He was trying to read an unscheduled paper on “‘The Cigarette – Enemy or Red Herring?” and it became obvious that he felt cigarettes were being used as a scapegoat for alleged dangers of diesel engine fumes.
U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chief Mike Pertschuk, presiding, restored order to permit the paper to be read to conclusion.”
http: //tobaccodocuments.org/lor/00622190-2193.html

the Cigarette – Enemy or Red Herring? – 1971

“The other theory is that the increase in lung cancer has been due to motor exhaust fumes; which are known to contain carcinogens, especially those of the diesel engine. I estimate roughly that the petrol engine is only about 6 % as dangerous as the diesel, and that if one adds.6 % of the petrol used to the diesel fuel consumed on the road’s in each year, one gets a graph of the huge rise in carcinogenic pollution of the atmosphere in Britain in the last 50 years .

If the curve of the rise in male lung cancer mortality is plotted beside it, one can see that there is a close relationship between them.
I believe that this correlation is more than mere coincidence.
The diesel’ theory needs to be thoroughly investigated’ by a crash programme of research, and the cigarette theory needs to be checked and the figures on which it is based audited by independent statisticians.

The cigarette theory has been used as a red herring to distract attention from the horrible pollution of’the atmosphere by the diesel engine. all we’ve had up till now has been a flood of propaganda and the virtual suppression of all criticisim and discussion.

I appeal to the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians to have the courage to support a fresh and unbiassed investigation.
Somebody dies of lung cancer in England and Wales every 18 minutes. I believe that a complete mis-diagnosis of the cause of the increase in lung cancer has unfortunately been made, and that suffering humanity has the right to a second opinion.”http://tobaccodocuments.org/lor/00622096-2098.html

Well, well! Thanks, Rose for all that. Many years ago I found online a study done a long time ago (by a woman doctor) on lung cancer and petrol station workers, that concluded their chances of getting lung cancer were a lot over the odds. I didn’t note the source details, I’m afraid.
What I’m wondering now, though, is whether there’s a move afoot to get us all into electric cars (now the oil’s running out)?
“It’s just a pity that all the focus was on smoking rather than looking for other possible causes”:
well, in my view that was quite deliberate. Anything that takes the spotlight off the smoking red herring is obviously good, but I think where they start putting it instead is motivated purely by politics/economics.

“On the snow-clotted plains of central Sweden where Wotan and Thor, the clamorous gods of magic and death, once held sway, a young, self-deprecating gene therapist has invented a virus that eliminates the type of cancer that killed Steve Jobs.

‘Not “eliminates”! Not “invented”, no!’ interrupts Professor Magnus Essand, panicked, when I Skype him to ask about this explosive achievement.

‘Our results are only in the lab so far, not in humans, and many treatments that work in the lab can turn out to be not so effective in humans. However, adenovirus serotype 5 is a common virus in which we have achieved transcriptional targeting by replacing an endogenous viral promoter sequence by…’

It sounds too kindly of the gods to be true: a virus that eats cancer.

“Cheap to produce, the virus is exquisitely precise, with only mild, flu-like side-effects in humans. Photographs in research reports show tumours in test mice melting away.

‘It is amazing,’ Prof Essand gleams in wonder. ‘It’s better than anything else. Tumour cell lines that are resistant to every other drug, it kills them in these animals.’

Yet as things stand, Ad5[CgA-E1A-miR122]PTD – to give it the full gush of its most up-to-date scientific name – is never going to be tested to see if it might also save humans. Since 2010 it has been kept in a bedsit-sized mini freezer in a busy lobby outside Prof Essand’s office, gathering frost. (‘Would you like to see?’ He raises his laptop computer and turns, so its camera picks out a table-top Electrolux next to the lab’s main corridor.)”

“To geneticists, the science makes perfect sense. It is a fact of human biology that healthy cells are programmed to die when they become infected by a virus, because this prevents the virus spreading to other parts of the body. But a cancerous cell is immortal; through its mutations it has somehow managed to turn off the bits of its genetic programme that enforce cell suicide. This means that, if a suitable virus infects a cancer cell, it could continue to replicate inside it uncontrollably, and causes the cell to ‘lyse’ – or, in non-technical language, tear apart. The progeny viruses then spread to cancer cells nearby and repeat the process. A virus becomes, in effect, a cancer of cancer. In Prof Essand’s laboratory studies his virus surges through the bloodstreams of test animals, rupturing cancerous cells with Viking rapacity.”

“The trouble with Magnus’s virus is Magnus is Swedish,’ he says, wincing and clutching the air with frustration.

‘It is so,’ Magnus agrees sorrowfully. Swedishly uninterested in profiteering, devoted only to the purity of science, Magnus and his co-workers on this virus have already published the details of their experiments in leading journals around the world, which means that the modified virus as it stands can no longer be patented.

Rose a cure isnt anything Big Pharma would be interested in! But the government should yank all research funding from those who profit from cancer treatment drugs and focus on this with lightning speed! If in fact its true and I have a feeling it might just be.

There are many hidden truths about the world of wind turbines from the pollution and environmental damage caused in China by manufacturing bird choppers, the blight on people’s lives of noise and the flicker factor and the countless numbers of birds that are killed each year by these blots on the landscape.

The symbol of Green renewable energy, our saviour from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the subsidies taxes that consumers pay for the privilege of having a very expensive power source that does not work every day for various reasons like it’s too cold or the wind speed is too high.

The US experience with wind farms has left over 14,000 wind turbines abandoned and slowly decaying, in most instances the turbines are just left as symbols of a dying Climate Religion, nowhere have the Green Environmentalists appeared to clear up their mess or even complain about the abandoned wind farms.

Our results are only in the lab so far, not in humans, and many treatments that work in the lab can turn out to be not so effective in humans. However, adenovirus serotype 5 is a common virus in which we have achieved transcriptional targeting by replacing an endogenous viral promoter sequence by…’

AHHHHHHHHH!!!! Where is the rest???

But then, on reading the rest of your comment, I understand…… It’s just that this takes me back a few years and I do remember being involved in a discussion about using the adenovirus as a mode of treatment for cancers.
As with the cause of lung cancer in workers in the chromium industry (my results pointed to the highly unstable intermediate chromium IV produced by the reduction of chromium VI, reducing agent being ascorbate [yes, vitamin C], which later then was by someone else confirmed). There was no benefit for me other than personal satisfaction; It would be nice to think, that my rough idea is something along the lines of what the Swedish actually did.

Maybe way out on the left field here, however my instincts tell me naff all happens without a good reason. Were ASH trying to lend support to Lansley?

If that was the case, then:

1) They have someone very close to Cameron who tipped them.

2) They don’t much like his replacement.

It’s highly unusual for pressure groups to openly endorse any one individual however, if this was an juvenille attempt to influence the outcome of the shuffle, it heralds a completely new chapter in British politics. One that I find both logical and intriguing.

Logical because they’ve seen Chapman use the press to bulldoze the government into total compliance. Furthermore they see Stanton as coming within a fag paper of winning in California. If they believe Britton has the stamina, then perhaps we’ll be seeing lots more of him.

Intriguing because, for all their faults, the British media will go over any “personality” with a microscope – and Britton is very similar to both Chapman and Stanton; a “virtual” expert at bugger all.

Smokingscot, good points!
Nevertheless,If they believe Britton has the stamina, then perhaps we’ll be seeing lots more of him.
We might well see more of Britton – Britton has not seen the stamina of people who can tell right from wrong yet!!!Let’s face it, WHAT have we got to lose??????
For us things can only get better and it is time to hold tobacco control accountable for what they did to people.!!!!

In politics the winds of change happen quickly and overnite,what this means for public policy is yet to be seen. But if the new bosses lack of activity within the Nazi Orginizations is any indicator we may fast see some radical policy changes too!

Must say I have had no problems with my GP or surgeon about smoking, of course they advise me to stop but accept I am an adult and can make my own decisions. I had no delay in treatment, no lectures. Maybe I have been lucky but I know my GP is very much against lifestyle being used to decide medical treatment and objects to the directives he gets suggesting that it should. He said that is not what he went into medicine for, I guess he is in his early 50s. I did see a young Dr. once who would hardly talk to me because I refused to stop smoking, I refused to ever see him again.

I read it last night and my first reaction was …. something along the lines of ‘good riddance’, just a lot less polite. And it was my pleasure.

Living with the smoking ban for over 5 years now, I have become wary. I am hoping we are not jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
I remember Clegg declaring he was going to listen to people – when there were numerous requests for amending the the smoking ban, Clegg said that this, as well as the re-introduction of the death penalty ,there were some calls (only a few!!!) for this, were not going to happen.
As a voter, Labour and the “Liberals” have been cancelled as an option.
The Tories, too, to 90%. The 10% I would give them are solely due to Brian Binley, who keeps asking for the promised review of the smoking ban (Labour did promise this for 2 years following it’s dictation a review – guess what – it never happenend!).
These days I am thinking hard whom to give my vote next time round. Sure, the Tories inherited Labour’s mess, so what is stopping Cameron to start reviewing the smoking ban? Let’s face it – I haven’t been on shopping trips into town for years; I hate shopping. It was only bearable when being able to stop at numerous cafes for a ‘coffee&ciggy break’.

But I’m wondering whether it shouldn’t just be hanging that is brought back, but the complete mediaeval traditional English punishment of hanging, drawing, and quartering. It would make for a great spectacle to watch someone like Andrew Lansley being hanged, drawn, and quartered.

Particularly if you could watch it while eating a burger, and drinking a beer or two, and smoking a few cigarettes. And it took about two hours, from start to finish, much like a football match. And you could bring the wife and children too. And buy souvenir mugs and photos and pieces of flesh.

No!!!!! Lansley OWES society much more; this would be over in 2 hours and grueling for the spectators. I would like him to live and being put to work 18 hours/day with a pick axe in a coal mine, listening to Debra Arnott’s “wisdom” by headphone, volume set at 11 at all times.
Particularly if you could watch it while eating a burger, and drinking a beer or two, and smoking a few cigarettes.

“Furthermore, when he arrives at his office, he’ll probably find Deborah Arnott or Professor John Britton sitting in his chair”

You may well be right.

Tony Blair’s 10 Years Of Tobacco Control
29 Jun 2007

“John Britton, co-author of the Comment, states: “Labour has achieved more in terms of tobacco control than any other UK government, establishing the UK as a world leader in this respect, and deserves credit for doing so.

However, it has taken 10 years to deliver results that could have been achieved in 5 or even 3, indicating that Blair’s government has lacked either the courage or the commitment to implement its policies.”

“Similar resolve will be needed to address some of the other major public-health challenges the government now faces, particularly obesity and rising consumption of alcohol, both of which also involve dealing with powerful and influential industries.”

“John Britton, co-author of the Comment, states: “Labour has achieved more in terms of tobacco control than any other UK government, establishing the UK as a world leader in this respect, and deserves credit for doing so.

It sure got it’s credit for it. Labour lost the last election. If it was up to me, Labour and the “Liberals” would never go near a government again.

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There must be an organisational problem at the British Medical Association because they seem to have trouble finding spokespersons who can tell the truth on the radio.We've seen the embarrassment that is Vivienne Nathanson before, a BMA mouthpiece who insisted that one cigarette smoked in a car emitted 23 times more toxins than in a pub prior to the smo […]

A guest post by The Broken Girl. A little history… I went to a kind of boarding school for a year. I had finished the mandatory years of schooling and I still hadn’t a clue what I wanted to be … Continue reading →